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Many years ago, TSSC introduced to my factory a visual measurement device referred to as a production activity log (PAL), also known to some as an hour-by-hour chart. Posted at the last operation of a particular process, the PAL provided an up-to-the-minute accounting and hourly summary of actual production quantity versus plan. The far right column of this report contained the most important information regarding the process health. If the actual rate in any hour deviated either high or low from the plan, the cell lead was accountable to report the problem and either remediate the cause or flag for additional assistance. Causes for deviations, either high or low, were innumerable: missing parts, missing operations, defective parts, broken fixtures, incorrect drawings to name just a few. As V.P. of manufacturing, I was accountable to review the PAL documents daily to assure overall process health. My job was to confirm that the area supervisors were able to address problems as they occurred. We didn’t call it Daily Management and we didn’t use the word “accountability, but it bore strong resemblances to both of these.

Shortly after implementing the PAL, I was chastised by TSSC’s consultant: “If you looked at the PAL,” he said, “you’d see that problems are not being fixed. If you don’t care, no one will waste their time reporting.” At the consultant’s insistence I began to visit and initial PAL’s every hour, an activity that was stressful for me, but also incredibly informative. As I paid closer attention, a few previously unnoticed accountabilities quickly became apparent:

Design engineering was accountable to provide a basic work standard and drawings detailing the specifications, dimensions, and features of the part or product. When these were wrong or incomplete, production became guesswork and rework. Too often, this particular problem did not get fixed for a long time, or ever. Not until I visited that actual place where the problem occurred did I grasp the significance of “incorrect bill of material” messages.

No one seemed to be accountable to provide fundamental skills training to team members that were needed to do the work. Skills like welding or soldering, for example, were not always adequately provided, creating safety and quality problems. Ultimately, this observation led to greater care in qualifying special skills – no more OJT. What might have been listed on the PAL problem column as “scrapped part” took on a much deeper significance when I was able to ask “Why?”

Industrial engineers were accountable to develop and improve standardized work to balance the production rate to customer need and to confirm new standards with team members. What I learned, when I looked more closely was that the various artifacts of standardized work were not always aligned with actual production and were not kept up to date. So-called “standard WIP” was not standard; sometimes there was a pile in front of an operation, other times nothing. In particular, the standardized work chart, which supposedly provided a visual image of the standard, was frequently out of date.

Area supervisors were accountable to visit at least hourly to provide support for problems that occurred in the previous hour. (Now I was doing this also in order to show commitment to the process.) Supervisors bristled at the idea that they were supposed to fix problems. “Every hour we have problems,” an angry supervisor told me, “and most of them I can’t fix.”

So what does this have to do with the visual controls on huddle boards; the red and green dots that enable managers to assess the process health “at a glance”? Several things:

First, if I, as a senior manager, had not gone to the actual Gemba, I would have remained woefully misinformed about process health. All of the missed accountabilities noted above would have been summarized into red dots.

Secondly, if I had not followed the process health on an hourly basis, I would have failed to grasp the importance of fixing problems instantly. They would have been batched for a daily huddle – and many likely would have been forgotten.

Third, if I had not shown a commitment to understand the problems, as my TSSC consultant said, the front line would not have wasted time reporting them. They would have just muddled along — SOS.

In 1995, we referred to the huddle board as a “production board,” and it provided a valuable periodic summary of quality, cost, and delivery, often capturing trends that would not have been apparent on daily charts; for example, delays occurring at the start of a shift or the start of week, or part shortages occurring at end of month. But, for breaking news, we went to the Gemba – the real place. And this is my concern about visual accountability as I often see it practiced today: It’s all about the huddle boards. When they are the only visual devices used by management, then the workplace becomes essentially invisible. (Incidentally, a quick read of David Mann’s book, will indicate that he intends huddle boards to be one of many visual devices, all of which must be functioning properly for the huddle boards to have any meaning.)

As part of your leader standard work, do you get out to the real place frequently to “sustain new behavior” or do you simply visit the huddle board and risk sustaining the old behavior?

Please send me your thoughts.

O.L.D.By the way: The TSSC consultant who took me to the woodshed in 1995 has just been added to the agenda and will be speaking at our October 10-11 Northeast Lean Conference in Providence, Rhode Island. Bryant Sander’s topic will be… Daily Management : ) I can’t wait and I really hope to see you there.

[Blogger’s Note: A couple of important events coming up in the next couple weeks give me an opportunity to showcase a great American manufacturer in this post.

First the events:

1) The 2014 Massachusetts Advance Manufacturing Summit, on April 29 at the Worcester, MA DCU Center will feature keynoter Harry Moser, a national champion for reshoring manufacturing. Through his organization, The Reshoring Initiative, Moser has highlighted the fallacies of “low cost” off shore production and created a new momentum to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. GBMP will have a booth at the conference, and we hope to see folks from our locale there.

2) On May 5-6, as part of the Shingo Institute’s annual Shingo Conference, GBMP’s Shingo Certified Instructors will be teaching the Institute’s Discover Excellence course at Whirlpool’s Findlay Operations in Findlay, Ohio.

And that brings me to the great American manufacturer, one who will not “re-shore” because, despite all of the off-shoring frenzy of the last two decades, they kept jobs here in the U.S. – they never left! Whirlpool, where I’ll be teaching on May 5-6, has always been “Made in the USA.” I asked my friend, Kevin Spradlin, Assembly Leader at Whirlpool’s Findlay Operations, to provide a guest post to tell their story. I hope you’ll find it as inspiring as I have. In fact, we’ve invited Kevin and his team to present their lean journey at the Northeast L.E.A.N. Conference in October in Springfield, MA, a great opportunity for you and your team to network with other lean practitioners like Kevin!]

O.L.D.

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Always Made in America

It is interesting to hear about companies proclaiming how they are bringing jobs back to America. Often they refer to it as re-shoring, in-sourcing, etc. The compelling part about Whirlpool’s story is that we have always been committed to U.S.-based manufacturing. Two decades ago as companies left our shores to follow “cheap” labor, we kept most of our manufacturing in the U.S. One has to ask: How did you compete when all of your competitors left? The answer is simple yet the journey has been hard. We had to develop a mindset of continuous improvement.

In the beginning, the road started with a small group of individuals completing a rigorous training called Operational Excellence. This is Whirlpool’s version of 6-sigma. At that point projects were bountiful and gains were huge. Several years of training, developing black belts and master belts through hands- on, tacit learning under the tutelage of a coach yielded tremendous results in our products and our profits. However, our top leadership was looking for more!

At the turn of this century, a core group of individuals started to study “The Machine that Changed the World.” In our initial lean journey we thought of lean as a set of tools; much like anybody on the outside looking in thought of OPEX (as we call it). However, after 5 to 6 years of starts, stops and learning, we really started to realize this is all about people! Moreover, if you really have people at all levels understand what a culture of continuous improvement is all about, a culture can truly start to change.

My own journey started well before my Whirlpool days when I was working for Delphi Automotive Systems and had the chance to work with John Shook’s TWI group. My first teacher was an individual named Jim Parcus. Jim had worked at the Georgetown Toyota facility as a team member, team leader, and area manager. Jim was introducing us to concepts and tools, but though I did not realize at the time, also behaviors I was learning by being immersed in the application of the tools. I brought that learning with me to Whirlpool, but did not truly understand Kaizen — and what behaviors it took to support Kaizen and problem solving — until I had the chance to work with the YOMO consulting group at the Marion Division from 2007-2010. During that time, I had the privilege to work with many teachers, but our main teacher was Mr. Ohba.

Mr. Ohba was the former leader of the TSSC. Mr. Ohba had a team that was tasked to come in and help us learn how to transform the Marion Division of Whirlpool. Our “target” and/or business need was to dramatically reduce the cost of our front-load dryer by $50! As part of that learning, we also transformed our behaviors and how we thought about what it truly takes to develop people in the continuous improvement way of thinking. We were also fortunate that our plant leader, Brian Gahr, had worked for several years with Mr. Ohba and learned modeling the behaviors as a leader in lean.

Mr. Ohba had a way of asking great questions to make you think, but I was always amazed by his humility. He always would say that “nobody is an expert.” I interpreted that as we are always learning. So, my biggest learning through all of my experience is that lean gives us a vehicle to do great things by unlocking the potential of our people. Lean, Kaizen, continuous improvement — whatever you call it — is the competitive advantage as long as it is used to nurture and grow your folks!

So fast forward to 2014 in humble Findlay, Ohio, and what you find is the world’s largest dishwasher plant. We have 2,200 employees and are the largest employer in Hancock County. We are part of Whirlpool’s overall Ohio presence of five plants encompassing more than 10,000 employees. Clyde sports the world’s largest washing machine plant and Marion is home to the world’s largest clothes dryer plant. Ottawa houses the upright freezer facility, and last but not least, Greenville is home to the legendary Kitchen Aid stand mixer plant. We just announced a $40M expansion to Greenville that will add 400 jobs to the plant. I am not sure any other manufacturer even makes small appliances in the U.S., let alone stand mixers. Overall Whirlpool employs 22,000 employees in North America. That is more than all of our major competitors combined! This did not happen by accident. It was a commitment to continuous improvement at all levels that fueled it. The passion for American manufacturing endures to this day.

Whirlpool is deeply committed to communities by providing good paying jobs and supporting community service. We support Habitat for Humanity, Cook for the Cure, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, and our local United Way agencies. As a matter of fact, Findlay Operations has built several Habitat homes in the community — we were the first plant to build a Habitat Home in seven days! All of the credit goes to our greatest resource: our people. Nearly half of our employees have worked at the Findlay operation for more than 20 years. We believe these jobs represent more than just a job. All of these folks live locally, shop locally, pay taxes, tithe at church, etc. Our plant is the “lifeblood” of the community. We believe everybody working here is part of something bigger than themselves. We represent something greater than just building dishwashers. We believe we are creating a legacy that will endure for generations to come!

In conclusion, Whirlpool’s Findlay Operations are on a journey to become a Continuous Improvement Organization. We want to be the “undisputed choice” when someone goes to buy a dishwasher, and they only consider buying our product. We believe in putting the customer first, the dedication of our people and stay committed to continuous improvement wherever the work is done. We will accomplish this by means of 9 principles:

Respect for the capabilities of all people

Common objectives

Business results driven through an external customer focus

All decisions are principal based not rule based

Personal development

Teamwork

Continuously improving

Decision making at the lowest level as we problem solve

Productive use of differences

Thanks Bruce for the chance to tell our story …the story of a company invested in American Manufacturing!

As any conference-goer can attest, the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line when that line is the lunch line. At Lean conferences like the ones I attend it’s especially incongruous to hear stories all morning about customer service and flow, and then later stand in a long line at the lunch buffet. (I confess, I’m not sure if I should be classified as the customer waiting for service, or inventory in queue before the serving process. Can someone please help me clear up my role in that scenario?)

In this context, the recent LEI Transformation Summit in Orlando was noteworthy not only for its excellent theme, speakers and learning sessions, but also for its luncheon arrangements. On day one of the conference, I entered the dining room with the expectation that there would be iPhone time – time for emails and maybe a game of Words With Friends – while I stood in the lunch queue. But there were no lines. No waiting. I watched intently as conference-goers streamed into the dining room and, hardly breaking stride, moved through one of four double-sided serving lines.

After lunch I asked Rachel Regan, LEI’s conference organizer, how they managed to avoid lines. “Do you have a system?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied, “we have a rule of thumb: one two-sided table for every hundred attendees.” She added, “We also try to choose meals that don’t require too much assembly, like sandwiches, because that can cause delays, and we keep the serving tables close together so there’s a better distribution of flow. The hotels like to spread the tables out, but people then tend to flock to the nearest table. And we make sure that food is replenished frequently to avoid a line stop.” Rachel thought for a moment and finally offered, “To be honest, we also had a little luck today because one of plenary sessions before lunch ended a little early and the other a little late, so this staggered the groups at the lunch line.”

I thanked Rachel for sharing her thoughts about the lunch line standardized work. I thought to myself, “TPS works everywhere.”

This could have been the end of my post, but as luck would have it, the second day of LEI’s conference was opened by Jamie Bonini of TSSC co-presenting with Margarette Purvis, CEO of the New York City Food Bank and perhaps the most eloquent and passionate Lean advocate that I have heard in many years. Her challenge: to reduce hours of waiting for food at their pantries. Bear in mind, these are not queues of over-stuffed conference-goers like me waiting in a warm conference center. The pantry serves persons with a critical need for nourishment, who stand in the cold, waiting to feed their families. The pantries are their lifelines. And as Ms. Purvis put it, “ They should not suffer the indignity of waiting for hours in line for a meal.” Enter TSSC with an offer to help eliminate the pantry lines. This compelling example of TPS employed for the public good is documented in the following link— many small changes for the better that came from the dedication of the NYC Food Bank staff under the generous guidance of TSSC. I encourage you to take a couple minutes to study it: http://www.tssc.com/nfp-fbny.asp. I thought to myself once again, “TPS works everywhere.”

Do you have a unique application of TPS that you would like to share? Please comment.

Twenty years ago, I was introduced to a graphical method for, as it was put to me, “sharing what you see” with others. It was referred to as a material and information flow diagram, or M&I for short. Brian S., a consultant from TSSC who was assisting my factory, pointed to a diagram he had sketched earlier in the day and said “This is how we see the current condition of line X and I’d like to confirm it with you before we proceed.” I gazed at the drawing, a little reminiscent of a process map, but with symbols like striped arrows, and starbursts and, in particular, headstones.

“Headstones!” I exclaimed to Brian, “What do they represent?”

“Stagnation”, he replied, “of either material or information.” He continued, “like stagnant water: not flowing, smelly, a bad thing.” He pointed to a process box labeled ‘Assembly.’ “See here, there are eight days of queue in front of assembly,” he said. “That’s stagnation.”

The power of this graphically explicit M&I tool was immediately apparent. At a glance, the entire process condition from incoming purchased material to customer shipment was far more obvious. I studied the diagram, staring alternately at the piles of WIP on the actual floor and then back at the headstones before each process box on the M&I. “Hmm,” I answered as I summed up the days of inventory, “this looks like cumulatively about fifty-six days of inventory in queue across the entire process. Or should I call it “stagnation?”

“Call it inventory if you like, but it’s stagnating together with the associated production orders,” Brian answered.

“When will you teach me more about this M&I tool?” I asked.

“Wait a little,” Brian responded. “We’ll show you more when we think you’re ready.”

About a year after this early lesson, Learning to See was published, introducing the world to Value Stream Mapping (VSM). Perhaps the most significant technical method in the last 20 years, VSM has created the opportunity for its practioners to “see” their workplaces in a new way. Today the prescriptive VSM symbology, nearly identical to that in TSSC’s M&I method, has been copied into hundreds of derivative value stream mapping books and can be seen on the walls of factories, offices and clinics around the world. I wonder, however, why the judgmental headstone (stagnation) was replaced by a more nondescript triangle symbol (inventory) when the ideas were translated from Toyota to the rest of us.

“You can make your own symbols up,” Brian S. told me at a later time, “as long as you all understand what they mean.” But I think I’ll stick with the headstone rather than the triangle. Because fear of reducing inventory continues to be one of the biggest problems lean implementers face today, let’s make it as ugly as possible.

How about at your facility? Is it inventory or stagnation? I’d love to hear from you.

O.L.D.

BTW – There’s still time to sign up from my next free webinar on Tuesday, January 14, 3:00-3:45 p.m. EST. The topic is Value Stream Mapping: Mistakes and Faux Pas. Hope you can join me. Click here to read more and register.

Many managers ask me “How can I accelerate my company’s Lean transformation?” My answer is two fold: First get the direction right, and then get everyone rowing in that direction.

One of my posts from about three years ago (worth reading for context if you don’t remember it), entitled Rowing, relates a story about the second point, “getting everyone rowing.” The rowing analogy was shared with me (on a cocktail napkin) by Ryuji Fukuda, a Deming Prize Winner and author of Managerial Engineering (after 25 years, still one of the best Lean transformation books.)

Dr. Fukuda advocated that to get everyone rowing, it’s important first to provide full support for the “red-faced” employees, the ones who are already rowing, and second to find ways to engage those who are “in the boat but not yet rowing.” As for the employees who are not even in the boat: Spending time with them is insulting to the employees who are already in the boat.

As a manager who spent far too much time trying to gather in “the lost sheep,” at the expense of the red-faced employees, this was an important lesson for me.

What was missing from the 1990 cocktail napkin rendering, however, was the “right direction” piece. Today, many organizations provide alignment through a variety of policy deployment tools, town hall meetings, morning huddles and such. But are these various mechanisms sufficient? The Pied Piper of Hamelin, after all, provided total alignment for the town’s rat population, running them all over a cliff. Taiichi Ohno, regarded as the primary creator of TPS (aka Lean), recognized that an organization’s philosophy must precede its strategy. More recently that philosophy was put forth by the Toyota Production System Support Center with a further analogy: True North – a set of fundamental guiding principles for transforming your organization.

So I’ve taken artistic liberty to add management into the boat. The red-faced manager at the helm is first making sure the boat’s heading is True North, and then doing his/her best to get everybody in the boat rowing in that direction.

True North is the theme for this year’s annual Northeast Region Shingo Prize Conference in Hyannis, Massachusetts. It’s only a week away now.Please don’t miss this very affordable opportunity to share with and learn from over 600 lean experts and practitioners how True North principles can transform your organization.